


When the Inevitable Happens

by orphan_account



Series: One Shots [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Apocalypse, I Am Legend crossover, M/M, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 09:19:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1935417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything was gone. The people, the humanity, the trees, the birds, the pets.<br/>Gone.<br/>It had taken twenty-four hours for the virus to set in. Twenty-four hours for the human race to be all but wiped clean off the face of the planet. Molly hadn’t made it. Nor had Mycroft or Mrs H.<br/>Greg had lasted a year. Anderson and Donovan only a week longer.<br/>Some of the rest of the city had made it six months, some a year, some had even made it fifteen months. But now… as far as they knew, Sherlock and John were all that remained.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the Inevitable Happens

**Author's Note:**

> For the lovely garrulousgibberish, whom I was given the fantastic opportunity to have as my Exchangelock giftee. Hope you like it :)

John carefully stepped over a piece of metal as he walked down the street. He had stopped using the pavement once Sherlock had been jumped by one of the infected while they had been walking.

It wasn’t like it mattered anyway, really. There wasn’t anyone driving on the roads. Most of the vehicles were completely wrecked – their occupants having turned while driving them – and the rest had ran out of petrol a long time ago.

He could hear footsteps behind him, but he ignored them for now, just continuing to walk, seemingly without purpose. It was easier to disguise himself if he didn’t walk like a soldier. It was daylight hours anyway. The only things outdoors right then would be the dying, and John wasn’t in much of a mood to put anything out of its misery. He just needed to get food and then get back to Sherlock.

With a few deep breaths, he managed to continue on his way, only glancing back when the footsteps stopped.

One of the infected had collapsed in the street, and, as John had suspected, was slowly dying. They couldn’t make it in the sun, for some reason, and John had witnessed a few of them getting sick or whatever and coming out into the daylight to die. He didn’t care. The more that died, the fewer that came after him. The fewer he had to kill to protect himself and Sherlock.

After carefully checking the perimeter and peering inside of the store – one of John’s usual haunts when he went to gather food – he stepped inside. He went up and down the isles as quickly as possible, never wanting to stay too long in one place at any particular time.

There was nothing there.

“What the fuck?” John swore under his breath, turning in a small circle in the well-lit store. A week ago there had been plenty of canned goods here, enough to last him at least two more trips to this location. Now there was nothing.

With his heart a bit closer to his throat than it had been a few minutes ago, John left the store, stepping out into the open again. He glanced up at the sky, checking how much sun he had left, and he was disappointed to see that he didn’t have nearly enough. He needed to get back home with the limited amount of food that he had managed to scrounge up.

He tried not to look around him as he headed back to where he had left Sherlock – in their barred-up flat on Baker Street. He knew what was there – he had walked this street what seemed like a million times in search for food – but that never kept him from looking, that never kept him from wanting to _know_.

To the right, there was nothing. Same buildings, same rusting metal and cracked pavement and piles of vehicles.

The weeds were starting to get tall again, this late into the spring. John hated when they grew over his head. Even in the daylight, then, he was in danger. He never knew what could be hiding in the tall grass, what could be waiting to spring out at him. Tigers and lions from the zoo were the worst, but even the normally herbivorous animals had turned to carnivores once they had been infected. Nothing was safe from this disease, not even the birds.

He missed having a vehicle when that time of the year came around.

Holding his breath, John turned his head to the left, scoping as he walked.

They crowded the doorways, staring at him as he walked, watching his movements with those intelligent black eyes of theirs. They didn’t move except for their chests heaving with the effort to breathe.

John sucked in a breath, glancing away and starting to jog home. They wouldn’t come out after him – they couldn’t. Jogging just made him a more appealing target for the animal predators. Not that he cared right now; he just wanted to get far away from the peering eyes of the infected.

* * *

 

“Sherlock!” John yelled as soon as he was back in the flat, dropping the bag of canned foods on the floor. He didn’t care right now about the damned food. He wanted to see his partner, to make sure that Sherlock was safe, healthy. He wanted to hold him and make sure that his experiments on finding a cure hadn’t gone wrong today.

“Sherlock!” he called again, holstering his pistol as he trotted down the stairs, into the basement where Sherlock ran his experiments.

“I’m here, John,” was his reply, and John’s heart sang with joy as that familiar baritone coursed through him.

He opened to door, pushing through the heavy plastic that they had hung up so that whatever Sherlock was messing with wouldn’t leave the room. Glancing around, John noticed Sherlock bent over his table, obviously reading over his notes. Notes about the rats in the cages, notes about the dog that hadn’t survived the experiments on it.

Notes about how in the hell they were supposed to survive indefinitely.

“Sherlock,” John whispered, smiling at the younger man despite the spook he had had on the street.

Bright grey eyes met John’s, and Sherlock suddenly straightened, walking over and wrapping John in a tight hug.

John sagged, clinging to Sherlock, not caring that he smelled like chemical, not caring that he felt chilly and disengaged in his white lab coat. He was _Sherlock_ and he was whole and breathing.

“What happened?” Sherlock asked, pulling back and cupping John’s face, looking into his eyes, trying to deduce it for himself.

“Nothing. Nothing important, anyway,” John replied, setting one of his hands over Sherlock’s. “I just need to find a new place to get food. I’d been going to this one too often, I guess,” he said, taking a heavier breath. “They were watching me when I went home. Waiting. They’re hunting us, Sherlock. I…”

“It’s okay,” Sherlock breathed, carding his fingers through John’s hair. “It’ll all be okay, alright? Just stay out of the shadows, no matter what, understand?”

John nodded, closing his eyes and leaning into Sherlock’s touch. “I know. I will.” He leaned up and quickly kissed Sherlock before turning for the door. “I’m going to go close up for the night. Don’t be too long, okay? I’d like to be in bed before full dark.”

“Yes, dear,” was Sherlock’s reply, giving John a reason to smile fully.

He went around to the lower level’s windows, barring them up securely, the way he had been doing for the last two years. He locked down the doors, bolting all of the locks – there were ten on each door – and securing the traps on the inside of them. They had UV lights in abundance, but they tried to never use them, knowing that both electricity and the life period of the lights was minimal.

So they were set up as a last-ditch effort to stop the infected, should they break-in.

By the time John was done with the lock-down, Sherlock was waiting for him in the kitchen, smiling softly over a couple open cans of food.

“What’s for supper tonight, then?” John asked, setting down the new bag of cans that he had gathered.

Sherlock hummed, sliding a can towards John’s usual seat. “Pineapples and green beans. We had enough, well… I think spam counts as a meat, doesn’t it?” he teased, nudging John with his foot under the table.

John laughed, stabbing at a piece of pineapple. “Technically, yes. Spam is a meat, though it’s flavour has some catching up to do.”

* * *

 

Four days passed as uneventfully as possible. John got food, trying to stock up for the summer, when it was most dangerous, and making a goal to have food set aside for the winter as well. Sherlock kept experimenting on his rats in the basement.

John knew, completely and entirely, that there was no cure. Sherlock had been working at it for two years now, and he hadn’t even found something that worked on the rats. There was nothing. The virus trumped every other form of living organism. So far, it had even managed to morph other viruses to act the way it did.

John shook his head, clearing away his thoughts as he started from the flat. He knew that he could get a decent distance if he took off at this time, he just had to stay out of the shadows, had to keep where the light was on him constantly.

The morning was warm, surprisingly, not carrying the usual evening chill on it. He could take a lungful of air and not end up coughing lightly because it had frosted the inside of his lungs. It was gorgeous, the kind of morning that would have prompted him to take Sherlock for a slow stroll through a park before all of this had happened.

Shifting his hold on his rifle, John trotted down the street, making for an old grocery store that he rarely went to because of the distance between it and the flat. He was making the trip today, though, because he was running out of closer places with food, and he wanted to have enough on him when he sat down with Sherlock to start planning how they were going to handle this.

John knew that they were going to have to move.

John knew that Sherlock was going to beg to stay.

It took an hour and a half to get to the store, only for him to find that it was still half-encased in shadows. “Shit,” John muttered, turning in a slow circle to see if there was any other place that he could go. There was a petrol station not too far away, he knew, so he took off in that direction, hoping that there would be something – be it food or clothing – that would make the trip worth it.

He was just rounding the corner when his eyes caught something that he had missed on his way to the store.

A pyramid of canned foods on the pavement.

John swallowed, slowly stepping towards the small monument.

His mind was going at least a thousand miles an hour, knowing that the infected had done this, but hedging that maybe, just maybe, it had been another human. He thought it was a trap, was almost positive that it was a trap, but the whole side of the street was bathed in warm sunlight.

Did he risk it, or did he wait for the grocery store to get lit up better?

* * *

 

Sherlock looked up from what he was doing several hours later. He had heard the door slam, heard the heavy footsteps of John’s boots, but there was no other sound. John’s warm voice didn’t drift down to him, full of worry, the way it usually did.

“John?” Sherlock called hesitantly, pealing off his lab coat as he left his room and mounted the stairs. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

“John!” Sherlock yelled, catching John’s arm as the other man was heading down the stairs, a determined look on his face and a limp in his step.

He tried to pull away, and Sherlock shoved him back against the wall, gripping his chin and forcing their eyes to meet.

“Shit,” he breathed, knowing immediately what had happened, just by the wide pupils, the tint of black on the edge of the irises.

John looked down, his soldier’s composure slipping. “I’m so sorry, Sherlock. I-I wanted to get as much food for us as possible. I wanted to make sure that we would be okay through the worst of it.” He choked on the air he was breathing, dropping his head forward until it was resting against Sherlock’s chest. “I’m sorry.”

Sherlock hushed him, stroking his fingers through his short blond hair, gathering John closer to him.

“I’m not letting you leave,” Sherlock whispered, lowering his head so that his lips were next to John’s temple. “It’s us until the end. I told you that when this started.”

“No, Sherlock!” John pulled away from him, staring up with real fear in his eye. Sherlock had never seen him look like that before. “I’m not… I can’t stay here knowing that you… that I’m going to turn and bite you, maybe even kill you. I can’t do that.”

Sherlock smiled softly, combing his fingers through John’s hair and looking down at him with nothing but love. “Come with me,” he whispered, guiding John up the stairs and into their flat. He shut the door behind them and locked it. It was early enough that he wasn’t worried about barricading the house.

Threading his fingers through John’s, he walked into the bedroom and started changing, pulling out of his loose t-shirt and grubby jeans, motioning for John to do the same.

“Sherlock… what are you doing?” John asked, though he slowly complied, taking off his weapon belt and pulling off his layers of shirts. He undid the laces of his boots and stepped out of them, shimmying out of his jeans until he was standing in his pants.

“Favourite outfit,” Sherlock said, walking over to the wardrobe. “Put it on,” he instructed, no hesitancy or wavering in his voice. He was sure about this. It was something that he wanted to do.

Efficiently, he pulled on black trousers, glancing over at John to make sure that he was complying before he took his purple shirt from the wardrobe. He quickly slipped it on, buttoning it and tucking it in. He hadn’t worn a nice outfit like this in nearly two years.

“Meet me in the living room, please,” he whispered, walking past John as he was buttoning up a black shirt. Sherlock kissed the side of John’s neck before he left the bedroom, leaving the door open.

Once in the living room, he pushed what remained of the furniture out of the way, giving them a nice open space in the middle of the room. Smiling to himself, Sherlock glanced up, hearing John coming down the hall.

“You look nice,” John complimented, smiling softly. “What’s all this?” he asked, gesturing around the room.

“It’s for us,” Sherlock replied, his voice soft as he walked over to the radio, slipping in a cassette of some recordings he had done on his violin. He turned to John as the soft music filled the air, and he held out his hand, beckoning John closer.

Fighting back tears, John stepped forward, taking Sherlock’s hand, setting his other on Sherlock’s shoulder.

Sherlock smiled, placing his hand on John’s hip. “Do you remember the steps?” he whispered, kissing John gently.

“How could I forget?” John asked, resting his head on Sherlock’s shoulder.

Slowly, they started dancing, swaying to the gentle rhythms of the music. Sherlock rested his cheek on John’s head, humming along with the music and closing his eyes. He couldn’t help the few tears that slipped from his eyes, knowing that it was over, that John was turning, and he would either kill Sherlock or bite him and change him as well.

“I love you,” Sherlock whispered, smoothing his thumb over John’s side.

John sobbed, burying his face against Sherlock’s chest. He couldn’t manage words, but he nodded, and that was good enough for Sherlock.

They kept dancing.

The song switched, and still they danced. John took the lead at some point, and Sherlock gladly let him take charge, smiling down at him, brushing his fingers through his greying blond hair at his temples, trying to put as much love into the gesture as possible.

He could see the change happening in John. The tightening of the skin, the darkening of his eyes. John’s breath quickening to an alarming pace.

Sherlock sobbed, cupping John’s cheeks, never breaking their stride.

“I love you so much,” he whispered insistently, connecting their lips and tasting him one last time, holding him close, promising to never let him go.

A low, throaty growl came from John, but Sherlock didn’t care. He threw his arms around John, fully crying now, holding on to his best friend, his lover, the only man he had ever cared about.

“Us until the end, John,” he whispered.


End file.
